


night shift

by hajitoru



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Grim Reapers, M/M, Reincarnation, Witches, i honestly dont know what the fuck is this have fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25414750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hajitoru/pseuds/hajitoru
Summary: issei brings death. he devours souls and makes pocket change off of them. he doesn't, however, expect to run into a witch with a smart mouth and a look in his eyes that feels distantly familiar.
Relationships: Hanamaki Takahiro/Matsukawa Issei
Comments: 10
Kudos: 103





	night shift

Issei has become disgustingly bored with death.

It had been exciting at first—traversing through the world, unnoticed and uncared for, taking souls into his hands, holding them close, and crushing them with a deafening crack. He loved the power that came from seeing eyes glaze over with fear, knowing that his shadowed face and dark curls were the last things people saw before stumbling into the underworld. The screams were always the best part, though, silent to everyone but him. He devoured those cracked wails, let them slip beneath his tongue, and sleep there.

But death isn’t the way it used to be.

Now it’s slow, torturous. Issei has to put in actual effort, fight the flesh for the soul that’s ready to flee its entrapment. It’s like forcing a caterpillar out of its cocoon before it’s a butterfly—because apparently people actually want to fly and live and be happy now. Whatever. Issei just wants it to stop being a fight.

Hopefully, tonight proves to be less than a battle and more like falling asleep—every soul willing and ready to escape their inevitable descent into the ground.

It’s far past moonrise when Issei takes to the streets of Miyagi, scanning the almost empty roads for a few scattered bodies on their final breaths. He prefers these places now, the lower realms, where he can quietly work, rip the last bits of life out of a body that no one probably cares for. Sure, it’s not as fun as holding the frantic heart of a chairman who has so much to live for, or so they think they do, but it’s easier work. Gentler work.

Tonight he’s in all black–shirt, jeans, almost every piece of clothing is meant to blend in with the shadowed brick around him–with a dark gray jean jacket tossed over his shoulders. He thinks it’s the common fashion of this age, or at least something close enough to it to where he doesn’t stand out. Plus, he just prefers wearing all dark clothes. More mystifying. More death-like.

Something about the air in the Miyagi streets is off tonight, unbalanced. Issei shoves the uneasiness off his shoulders. It’s probably nothing, just a little too chilly or the clouds are hanging a little too low. Nothing for him to work himself up about. 

It’s empty out. Even though it’s halfway through the week, a few bars here and there are usually faint with one or two customers, but not tonight. Everything’s close—windows shut and hardly any lights are on, with the exception of street lamps. A little down for a Wednesday, but Issei shrugs it off. Summer is never a busy time. Most people prefer to die in the cold. Still, he’ll have to find at least one soul to take back with him tonight, even if the job requires him to actually try. 

The lack of bodies curled up in the open streets does nothing but prickle his skin. Issei wraps a finger around the front curls bouncing just below his forehead and tugs. There has to be at least  _ somebody  _ out tonight. One lonely person, looking for an easy way out, questioning why they’re even still alive in the first place—he can help them with that. He can help them with everything if they’ll let him.

He turns into an alleyway and practically gets tackled by a force that feels a little too human to be another reaper (these are his streets, he doesn’t want to have to fight for them), or anything else supernatural that might be out to get him. God forbid the furies come out tonight. He’d hate to have to wring a fury neck and hang them from a rafter. Displeasing the deities above him is  _ not  _ what Issei needs right now.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he grumbles, stumbling back a step or two.

“Sorry?” a voice says.

Issei freezes. This shouldn’t be happening. Nobody should be able to hear him, let alone bump into him and not go through his entire body. He turns around, slowly, to find someone staring right at him. Annoyed eyes. Disgusting strawberry pink hair that curves just above his eyes. A little uneven. Whoever this needs to bump into a barber, not the local grim reaper.

“You look dead.”

No fucking shit. He’s been dead for almost three hundred years, does this idiot expect him to look like a newborn baby?

“I guess that comes with the job of  _ killing people _ , but–” Issei catches himself before falling into a long ramble on the physical taxings of collecting souls. He coughs, shakes his head to clear it out, and focus on the issue at hand. “You can see me?”

“Uh, yeah,” the stranger says, as if it’s not alarming that a human can visualize  _ and  _ touch a grim reaper. 

Issei shoves his hands into his pockets and a lull spreads between the two of them.

There are so many roads that this can go down. This stranger  _ could  _ be some time of creature, only masking themselves, or some low-level deity that Issei’s never heard of, or just a regular fucking human being that can somehow see and touch him. He prays that it’s some weird coincidence, some strange creature in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Should I… not be able to see you?”

It’s amazing, to Issei at least, that someone can hear the words  _ the job of killing people  _ and completely ignore that it has even been said. If he were a human, the first thing he’d do is question why the hell someone kills people for a living, but apparently this guy has other priorities. Priorities that he should probably set straight before he ends up getting slaughtered in a dark alleyway like this one. Luckily enough for this stranger, Issei’s too caught up in the mystery of the situation to even consider stealing his soul and sending him to, what looks to be, an early death.

And what is he even supposed to say to the question?  _ No? Yes? I don’t know? _

Issei needs to think of something, quickly. Something that won’t directly put him in an awkward position of explaining exactly what a grim reaper is or the mountain of questions that lie behind being able to interact with one.

“Technically,” he starts, “no.”

“Oh.”

_ Oh _ ? He could genuinely snap this guy’s neck right now for being so nonchalant about the encounter. Does he not feel the chill in the air? The flickering street lamp looming over them? The hollowness of it all?

“So, what are you?” the stranger asks, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning a bit towards Issei as if to inspect him.

“What do you think I am?” Issei challenges.

“Nothing good.”

He laughs. Well, the guy isn’t wrong there.

“How can you see me?”

“I dabble in some stuff.”

“Drugs?”

“No, what the fuck?” Issei almost cackles at the offended look that flashes across his face.

“Magic,” he says, rolling his eyes at the absurdity of Issei’s assumption.

Oh, that clears things up quite a bit.

“You’re a witch, then,” Issei says. He takes a few steps towards the stranger, worries slipping off his skin, and into the night air.

He shrugs. “I guess so.”

“Focus? Green witch? Eclectic?”

“I don’t know, man,” he says, “I like tarot cards and shit.”

And shit. There’s a lot more that can lie behind cards and pendulums. Inviting unwelcome energies into a life, it’s dangerous work and this guy talks about it like he’s dealing cards for a game of rummy, not cards that predict the path of someone’s life.

“So you’ve exposed yourself to spirits and energies.”

“Yeah?”

“Well,” Issei grins, suddenly enjoying the bubbling dynamic between the two of them, the possibility that this guy has some insight on what lies within the layers of the universe, “how does it feel to know that you’re talking to death?”

“Like the card?”

The excitement instantly dissipates from within him. Witch or not, this guy is a fucking idiot.

Issei runs a hand through his curls and huffs. “No. Not like the card. Like the guy who creeps into houses and rips people’s souls from their skin.”

“Sick.”

It’s strangely conflicting, Issei thinks, to rollercoaster back and forth between finding him interesting and wanting to rip his skull clean off his shoulders.

“What’s your name?” Issei asks.

The guy raises an eyebrow, tilts his head a little to the right. “I don’t think it’s smart to give death my name.”

“Just tell me.”

“Spirits can do a lot with a name,” he says, nearing Issei. The faint honey glow of the lamp post cascades over his face, creeping along the slope of his nose, and for a second Issei thinks he can feel a flutter in the middle of his chest. (But his heart is long, long gone and there’s no way some random guy with shitty hair and a stupid smirk and idiotic demeanor would ever make his nonexistent heartbeat quicker than it should).

Technically, it’s not a lie. Issei can do myriad things with a name—haunt someone, send hellhounds or demons or any kind of creature after them for the rest of their miserable life, curse them to unsatisfactory years with no accomplishments, plague them, even. If this were some villainous person, someone who had evil plastered over their skin, maybe Issei would use the name to make their life a living hell.

This isn’t the case tonight.

He genuinely wants to know the stranger's name, but he hasn’t interacted with someone like this since—well, since before skyscrapers breached the skies and asphalt molded paths into directions. Needless to say, it’s awkward and Issei has absolutely no fucking clue how to just ask him for his name. Especially not when he’s somewhat knowledgeable about what something like Issei can do with that kind of power.

“I’m not going to destroy your life if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says.

The guy moves even closer to Issei, the curves of their shoes just barely touching, and leans up just a bit to peer into Issei’s face. It’s an internal battle to not shove him away.

“And I’m supposed to trust a demon—”

“Not a demon.”

“Close enough to a demon.”

“Nope,” Issei sighs. “Not even close, in fact. A hell of a lot worse.”

“You’re not making this easier for yourself.”

“Can you just tell me your name?”

“Why do you need it?”

“Because calling you ‘stranger’ over and over again in my head is annoying?”

“Oh, you’re thinking about me?”

Issei clenches his fists at his sides. He narrows his eyes and bends down slightly, his nose almost grazing the stranger’s nose. This banter has gone on long enough—he’s almost at wit’s end and is about ready to force some actual information out of this guy.

The stranger doesn’t even flinch at the proximity, in fact, a slow smile spreads across his face, as if he  _ enjoys  _ the challenge, like arguing with death is fun and games.

All Issei wanted for tonight was a couple of quiet and easy souls, not a witch with a fucking attitude worse than the ruler of the underworld themself. All he wanted was to turn some people in, cash his check, and prepare himself for the weekend (because tons of people  _ love  _ to contemplate death on the weekend when life isn’t in their way, and Issei  _ loves  _ to play the assistant in their thoughts), but no. He has to deal with  _ this _ . A witch being able to see him, talk to him, and not even fear life a little bit.

“Listen—”

“Takahiro.”

A thousand memories, fleeting across so many years, times that Issei hasn’t touched in forever, flood through his mind. Strands of faded strawberry pink hair and dark brown eyes and sunsets that had no end in sight. Takahiro. Nights spent hidden in back rooms, away from watching eyes, hands held below tables, gazes shot from across a field. The sun. The  _ sun _ . Issei blinks, blinks again, then gasps.

This isn’t possible, and if the current reality isn’t blending with the past, then something’s off. A timestamp, a dimension, something’s fucked up, because Takahiro shouldn’t be here. He should be in a grave, all cracked skeleton with worms crawling up his insides. He shouldn’t be standing in front of Issei, smiling, breathing.

“Ta—”

“Hi, Issei,” Takahiro says, smirk shifting into a gentle smile. His gaze softens for only a moment, his hand coming up to cup Issei’s cheek, but then he’s pushing past him before his fingers curve around his face.

Abrupt and alarming, but so like Takahiro. Remnants of his death filter around Issei, pale skin almost a sickly gray, chunks of vomit pooling on the floor beside his bed, numb fingers, and weak breaths. He leaves too quickly, doesn’t even give Issei the chance to ask him anything else or figure out whether or not this is some sick prank.

“Wait—”

“Catch ya later,  _ death _ !” he calls out without turning back, throwing his right hand up in the air with a little wave.

Issei remains beneath the street lamp, mind racing, skin tingling with a creepiness that he hasn’t felt since he was alive. There’s something about this witch, some kind of power bubbling within his veins that he’s mastered hiding. There’s no way, absolutely no way in  _ hell  _ that his Takahiro is alive, on this earth. It doesn’t add up. They’d lived together, died together. 

It’s a lost cause to even attempt to complete a job tonight, so Issei starts to walk the quiet streets until the scenery of Miyagi blends into a low red room—his space. He’ll find Takahiro again. If that’s really him, they’ll have to cross paths in the future. Issei can only hope that whatever this is, whoever that witch genuinely is, isn’t fucking with him.

**Author's Note:**

> matsuhana is so much fun to write.... omg..
> 
> and if i make this a bigger project??? then what???!!
> 
> twt: tooruciub


End file.
